The owner of alt-weeklies in Boston, Providence and Portland, Maine, will launch new sites for each paper on Jan. 1, according to the Boston Business Journal. Phoenix Media executive vice president Bradley Mindich says the $200,000 upgrade is a smart investment in light of the growth of Internet advertising. "In five years, it is highly probable that, as a converged media company, the Web could be the largest ad revenue generator for us," says Mindich. The Business Journal also reports that Phoenix competitor The Weekly Dig will launch a new site in March modeled after Boston.com but targeting the 18- to 34-year-old demographic.
For the first time, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' story-sharing site, AltWeeklies.com, has exceeded 100,000 unique visitors in a month. The rapid growth in traffic could have a positive impact on every paper that posts stories to AltWeeklies.
A year ago, AltWeeklies.com was a fledgling Web site with just a hundred stories, intent on escaping the notice of many visitors besides the AAN editors who would buy and sell stories there. Now it is an active news site with more than 4,400 stories and a readership that is rapidly growing.
